March 19, 2020 — Canada’s decision to close the border to some foreign visitors threatens to upend the Atlantic lobster and snow crab processing industry.
The processing plants rely on thousands of mostly Mexican temporary foreign workers who are no longer allowed into the country. The restriction applies to travellers who are not Canadian citizens, permanent residents or Americans.
March 6, 2020 — Canada has announced new protection measures for North Atlantic right whales, which face severe threats to their survival due to human activities off the Atlantic Coast of North America.
With just around 400 individuals believed to be left in the world, the North Atlantic right whale is listed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List. Right whales were once common on both sides of the North Atlantic, but have been effectively wiped out in the eastern North Atlantic. Members of the western population of North Atlantic right whales migrate between calving grounds off the coasts of Florida and Georgia in the United States to their summering grounds in the Gulf of Maine, Bay of Fundy, Scotian Shelf, and Gulf of Saint Lawrence. This migration is proving especially dangerous, as the most serious threat to the whales is death or injury from entanglements in fishing gear and collisions with ships off the east coast of North America, according to the IUCN.
The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) declared an “unusual mortality event” in 2017, a particularly bad year for North Atlantic right whales in North America that saw 17 deaths as the result of entanglement or ship strike. 12 of those deaths occurred in Canadian waters.
February 28, 2020 — Canadian fisheries regulators are taking new steps aimed at protecting endangered North Atlantic right whales from entanglement in fishing gear and vessel strikes. These steps include temporary closures of certain lobster and crab fishing areas.
Most of the right whales found dead over the past four years have been found off Canada — likely because climate-driven shifts in their prey’s abundance have led them to new feeding grounds in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, where managers were initially unprepared for their arrival.
Bernadette Jordan, Canada’s Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard, announced new protective measures in Ottawa Thursday.
“What we’ve learned throughout this time is that these marine mammals are unpredictable and no longer aggregate or feed in the same areas they once did,” Jordan says. “It’s why each season our measures change and evolve to be more effective than they were the year before.”
February 13, 2020 — Diners may soon find more farmed oysters and fewer Atlantic salmon on their plates as climate change warms Canada’s Pacific coast.
In a study published in Global Change Biology, researchers at the University of British Columbia looked at how climate change could impact 85 species of fish and mollusks that are most commonly farmed in seawater. They found that certain species like Atlantic salmon, European seabass and cobia, and certain areas like the tropics and the Arctic, could be particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.
Take Canada’s Pacific coast: by the mid-21st century, the region is projected to lose between 60 to 84 percent of area currently suitable for Atlantic salmon farming under a strong mitigation, low greenhouse gas emissions, and no mitigation, high emissions scenarios, respectively.
In contrast, the region would gain 46 percent more area for Pacific cupped oyster farming under the high emissions scenario by the 2050s, while Norway and Sweden could respectively see gains between 48 and 100 percent in areas suitable for Atlantic salmon farming.
February 3, 2020 — Nova Scotia’s fisheries and aquaculture ministry is taking people’s concerns about Cermaq Canada’s plan to establish operations in the province “very seriously”, CBC reported.
Cermaq Canada is looking at spending CAD 500 million ($378m) to create up to 20 open-pen salmon farms and land-based support facilities in Nova Scotia.
Some people who work and live in communities nestled along coastal areas Cermaq is eyeing for development have been speaking out and protesting against the plans.
However, open-pen fish farming is a huge economic driver for communities, bringing a tremendous amount of tax revenue for the province each year, according to Nova Scotia’s aquaculture minister, Keith Colwell.
“Open pen fish-farms already exist in the province, have for decades, and they will in the future,” Colwell told CBC.
January 16, 2020 — The Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) in Canada is instituting new requirements for the country’s lobster and crab fisheries, partially intended to help coordinate protection of the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale.
The new measure involves specially marked gear rope that will be required for roughly 14 fisheries, with all lobster and crab traps in Eastern Canada coming under the new rule, according to the CBC. According to a notice from the DFO, the requirements are part of the country’s effort to address ghost gear and to measure threats to marine mammals, particularly right whales, in the region.
January 7, 2020 — Robert Hache, director general of the Association Des Crabiers Acadiens, a trade group that represents some 115 snow crabbers in Canada’s Gulf of Saint Lawrence, has a few choice words for the four US state of Maine lawmakers who recently sent a letter to Wilbur Ross, secretary of the US Department of Commerce.
The letter calls for the president Donald Trump administration to ban the import of Canadian snow crabs, suggesting their fishing practices are more responsible for the decline of endangered North American right whales than those of Maine lobster harvesters.
“I find it so demoralizing to see public figures use fake facts or lies to simply put blame on an industry in order to support their own political interests,” Hache told Undercurrent News. “This is very saddening.”
December 18, 2019 — SEAFOOD NEWS — The salmon frenzy that started in the western Arctic earlier this year has gone on to reach a historic high.
Fisheries and Oceans Canada has been studying Arctic salmon populations since 2000, and collects samples every year as part of the Arctic Salmon Project. This year, 2,400 salmon were submitted to the department.
Last year, less than 100 salmon were collected from western Arctic waters.
Karen Dunmall, a biologist with Fisheries and Oceans Canada, said they got more salmon from harvesters in the western Arctic and Nunavut this year than in the last 20 years combined.
She said they also found that salmon appeared earlier than normal.
Dunmall said years when they would see lots of salmon were once “exceptional,” but high counts are becoming more of a regular thing.
“So the highs are becoming more high and they’re becoming closer together,” said Dunmall. “This year was an exceptionally high high.”
Dunmall said they heard from people that there was more ice in the water last summer, compared to this year, when there was no ice.
“So the salmon are responding to environmental variability and change,” said Dunmall. “Generally, things are warming up, but there are lots of other cues that the salmon are responding to.”
Dunmall said people caught salmon everywhere in the western Arctic, from Sachs Harbour and Banks Island, to all the way up the Mackenzie River in Fort Smith.
Each community in the Beaufort Delta region offered grocery gift cards in exchange for up to 10 whole salmon samples, as well as an unlimited number of fish heads.
Fisheries and Oceans then evaluates the samples to gather more information about Arctic salmon — including why their numbers are booming in the first place.
‘Pretty Crazy’ Catch In Norman Wells
Norman Wells resident Kevin Kivi has only been fishing for about three years. Last year, he caught no salmon, so it was quite a shock for him catch nearly 100 salmon this summer.
“There was a period where I put my net in for just over a week… and in those eight days it was 73 salmon I caught,” said Kivi.
He said the size of his catch grew over the course of the season, until he was pulling in 17 fish every time. He said catching big schools of fish like that is unusual.
“It was pretty crazy, the amount that were coming,” he said.
Kivi said that usually he catches lots of whitefish, but this year, he only caught about four.
He tends to give a lot of his fish to elders and other community members in town, or keep them for his family.
However, he said he feels it’s important to help Fisheries and Oceans with their research “to find out why they are coming up here.”
Community Helps With Sampling
The large number of samples meant that the Arctic Salmon Project had to rely on the help of community members to process the whole catch.
The territorial department of Environment and Natural Resources partnered with Mackenzie Mountain School in Norman Wells to help with monitoring.
Kevin Chan, a regional biologist with the department in the Sahtu, said kids at the school played a crucial role in collecting the samples.
The department taught them about the science behind the work of fisheries monitoring and management.
Chan said the students measured the heads, recorded data about where and when the salmon were caught, and collected muscle tissue and bones from the ear of the salmon.
Fisheries and Oceans will be continuing the salmon project next year, and hope harvesters continue to submit salmon samples and inform them if they see anything unusual.
This story was originally published on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.
December 16, 2019 — Canada Prime Minister Justin Trudeau released a slate of ministerial mandate letters on 13 December, outlining the priorities he wants his Cabinet to pursue.
In his letter to the Minister of Fisheries, Oceans, and the Canadian Coast Guard Bernadette Jordan, Trudeau called for an increase in the country’s marine protected areas to cover 25 percent of Canada’s oceans by 2025, and a further increase to 30 percent coverage by 2030. Currently, just under 14 percent of Canada’s waters are designated MPAs.
December 13, 2019 — A sixteenth of an inch doesn’t seem like much. But it added up to a whole lot for Nova Scotia lobstermen in December 1989.
A new law had been passed in the United States that increased the minimum allowable size of lobsters for import, by that seemingly insignificant margin.
The CBC camera showed a live lobster being measured using a specialized device.
But as Halifax reporter Paul Barr explained, the difference was anything but insignificant.
“That might not sound like much of a change to a non-fisherman,” he explained. “But in reality, it means as much as a quarter-pound increase in weight.”
That meant that fishermen were spending time catching lobsters they couldn’t export.